One of the many research passions of Magdalena
Sokołowska, regarded as the founder of Polish and cofounder
of European medical sociology, was sociothanatological
problems in the broad sense. Magdalena
Sokołowska’s version of “socio-thanatology” presented
at the end of the nineteen-seventies and the early
eighties consisted first of all in sociodemographic
considerations. The deontological and ethical-moral
problems, as well as individual existential experiences
associated with the process of dying, being disregarded
during the period in question, appeared in M.
Sokołowska’s research conceptions and papers in the
nineteen-eighties. She was particularly concerned with
the patterns of dying in medical institutions,
conceptions of dying trajectories, processes of “waiting
for death”, mechanisms of the institutionalization,
commercialization and medicalization of dying,
differences between the conditions and context of dying at home and in the hospital, consequences of
“slow dying” for the range of social roles performed by
the doctor and the nurse, the scope and character of
changes in the function and structure of the family in
the course of the process of dying and as a result of the
death of one of its members, analysis of social
behaviors after death in the institutional and noninstitutional
context (hospital, hospice, home), etc.
The analysis of Magdalena Sokołowska’s
“socio-thanatological” achievements allows us to
notice a clear evolution of her conception: from the
“epidemiological-demographic” approach, oriented
towards analysis of mortality, to a preference for
“qualitative” interpretations based on the investigation
of “subjective emotions” that accompany dying
persons.
Labetalol: the nineteen-eighties.
